Halting State

Man, a lot of these book reviews have been Charlie Stross haven't they? That's not on purpose, if anything I'd throw it at the feet of Stross being a fairly prolific author. Anyways, up today is Halting State. Halting State is a standalone book and not tied to anything else he's written. I don't know if a sequel is planned but even if it is it seems likely to be years away with all the other series he has. I was curious to read it because online games are central to the plot and I wanted to see his take on the hobby. Quick and hopefully unspoiler-y summary: In 2018 a police officer gets involved in an investigation of a virtual crime (a bank in an online game is robbed). We're quickly introduced to a company concerned with the virtual bank robbery and they assign a second character is to investigate and she gets partnered with a computer programmer/hacker who is supposed to be her tour guide to cyberspace. Of course, the whole thing is much more complicated than it seems on the surface and ultimately governments are involved and all sorts of double-crosses and backstabs happen. I'd seen reviews mention an idea along the lines of "The Atrocity Archives played straight" and I think that's a good capsule review. You'd be hard pressed to pick Bob from TAA and the computer guy in HS out from a lineup and get them right 100% of the time. Of course, I like TAA so this shouldn't be considered a knock at all. I just think it is fair to say that if you liked TAA you'll like Halting State. If you couldn't deal with the occult or campy elements of TAA then maybe HS is more your speed. But it's definitely in the same vein as TAA as opposed to his further out stuff like Accelerando or Glasshouse, and it doesn't have the same "this is book one of a saga" feel of the Merchant Family series. At a sheer mechanical level there was one thing I found a little odd. There are three viewpoints and it rotates every chapter but then it's told in second person. So it's written as "You do this" but then "you" changes every chapter. I understand the intent - it makes it read like interactive fiction (think "Zork") but it makes chapter changes jarring. Writing in second person is already unusual and then writing in second person with shifting POV? This is certainly the first time I've encountered that! It works, but I never got used to it and there was a little cognitive dissonance at each chapter break. Overall I liked Halting State. It's much more accessible than some of Stross' more out there books, and he understands the gaming source material well enough that he doesn't make any major missteps. The biggest ding I can give it is the weird second person deal and that's a really minor point. If you like Stross or even if you'd like a book extrapolating gaming out ten years or so, I'd recommend giving Halting State a shot.
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Heroes on Blu-Ray!

And lo, my resistance to Heroes Season 1 on HD-DVD has been rewarded:
Marking the rollout of the studio's first global release on Blu-ray(TM) will be the "Heroes: Season Two," which will debut beginning August 26, 2008. The highly anticipated premier of the sophomore season of NBC's "Heroes" will be buoyed by the simultaneous debut of "Heroes Season One" on Blu-ray(TM).
From thedigitalbits.com (I don't think that's a permalink, the site seems strange about that. Look for the "early update 4/17/08") Heroes season 2 wavered a little but in the (foreshortened by strike) end it was still pretty good television. And season one was the best show of last season, in my opinion. I almost bought Heroes S01 on HD-DVD several times, and the only holdup was that I could see HD-DVD wasn't the future. Heroes S01 on Blu-Ray? Oh yes please. Now I just need something that will rip Blu-Ray to my iPhone. Notice to hardware vendors: I'll buy a Blu-Ray drive for TinyGod as soon as this happens. For reals.
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Slaughterhouse-Five

I mentioned in my post on Catch-22 that I had purchased Slaughterhouse-Five. I'd never read any Kurt Vonnegut before and enough people who I respect mention liking his books that I figured I'd try this one. It wasn't really an intentional desire to go on an anti-war book kick and to the extent that it happened accidentally it was probably a bad thing. I didn't really want to read anti-war books regardless of how good they were. This book, much to nobody's surprise, is a real downer. I guess that shouldn't really be a strike against a book but it turns out that I really get irritated when my reading material is depressing. I know, I know, it's ridiculous to buy an anti-war book and then complain about depressing subject matter. I understand the logic but it doesn't change the fact that I didn't enjoy reading Slaughterhouse-Five. There are other problems I have with the book. It's often classified as science fiction, I guess because of the whole business about Billy Pilgrim (the main character) being "unstuck in time" and visiting aliens. On the other hand, the book implies fairly strongly that this is all in his head because he's suffered brain damage. Is it science fiction if the only science fictional elements are in the head of an established mental case? More importantly the whole thing centers around Billy Pilgrim believing that there is no such thing as free will. As a result, he doesn't really bother to do anything throughout the novel. He lives through the Dresden firebombing in WWII, and goes on to have a life but there's no real conflict here. So at the end what do we have? A haphazard jumbling of the life events of a WWII soldier (plus the weird stuff about an alien abduction). There's not much to draw from it, other than the fact that humans can suck and the Dresden firebombing was pretty frightful. I'm willing to accept those two assertions at face value and save myself reading close to 300 pages of elaborations. It's really hard for me to sign on for another Vonnegut book after this. Maybe I'd like his other stuff more, but I can tell you that if I bought another book it would go into the vast pile of books-to-read and likely never come out. I guess if somebody gave me a specific "oh you'd like X much better" I'd look at it. The good news is that this and Catch-22 were the only books in the "To-Review" pile that I didn't like. Hopefully I'll move through the remainder a little faster now that I've broken past the depressing duo.
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